Monday, August 31, 2009

Okey doke! So last weekend, Todd and I got a pile of veggies from our CSA as usual, and knowing that we were likely to get more corn than we could shake a stick at (at least in a single week) I figured I should look into new and interesting ways of processing corn! We had already frozen some earlier this summer, so that option was out. Looking around online, I found a few recipes for corn relish.

If you want to add a spicy kick to it, add some spicy peppers...I think the ingredients are pretty flexible so long as you maintain a safe level of acidity overall. I wanted keep the corn sweet, so I didn't take that route.

Now, how it's done:

1 - Blanche the corn in boiling water for 5 minutes, then transfer to ice cold water for 5 minutes. Once cool, cut the corn off the cob. This should yield about 2 cups, give or take.

2 - While that's going on, chop up your onion and peppers into itty bitty bits. I obliterated them in my food processor, which was super-quick. If you don't have a food processor, buy one (or get married so that other people give it to you)! :) It's totally worth it.

3 - Combine the chopped up onions, peppers, salt, sugar, vinegar, mustard seeds and celery seeds in a large deep saute pan and bring to a boil on medium heat. Once boiling, simmer 5 minutes.

4 - Add dry mustard, turmeric and corn to the mixture and simmer another 5 minutes.

5 - If your mixture feels too liquidy (which it will if you obliterated your veggies in your handy dandy food processor like I did) you'll want to add a bit of a flour/water mixture to thicken it up slightly. Mix 1/4 cup of flour with a little more than a 1/4 cup of water to make the paste, then add to the pan. Stir continuously, as adding the flour mixture will lead to a tendency for the food to stick to the pan.

6 - Ok, so while all that stuff was going on, you should have been preparing your jars and water bath for canning. Take the pan off the heat and fill your prepped jars with the relish, leaving a 1/2" headspace and process for 20 minutes in a boiling water canner. You should get about 2.5 pints from this recipe.

If you store the cans in a cool, dry place, the relish will be good for a year or so. Apparently it's quite tasty with catfish or a burger. We'll let you know when we give that a shot a few months down the road. In the meantime, I had the leftovers that didn't fit into the jars with my salad for dinner today. Look how pretty!